Timing tension
Barnett questions purpose of minister’s election statement; PNP asks PM to clarify
Published:Friday | April 4, 2025 | 5:35 AM
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Constitutional scholar Dr Lloyd Barnett has viewed the remarks by Cabinet Minister Marlene Malahoo Forte on the timing of Jamaica’s next general election with a blend of legal understanding and democratic concern. According to Barnett: “If you do...
Constitutional scholar Dr Lloyd Barnett has viewed the remarks by Cabinet Minister Marlene Malahoo Forte on the timing of Jamaica’s next general election with a blend of legal understanding and democratic concern.
According to Barnett: “If you do not contemplate going beyond what I would call the normal and conventional time, why should you mention it? And although everybody has accepted that the normal time is by September, she was criticising journalists for saying that it is September. Why should anybody concentrate on the exceptional rather than the normal and the appropriate?”
While chairing a Joint Select Committee meeting on the Constitution Amendment Republic Act 2024 on Wednesday, Malahoo Forte said the election was not constitutionally due by September as is widely believed.
“What the Constitution provides for is an outer life for the date of Parliament, and that is five years, and the life of the Parliament commences on the first sitting of the Parliament after a general election, not when the general elections are held,” said Malahoo Forte, the minister of legal and constitutional affairs.
“We know that the electoral laws require formalities to be complied with about counting, and sometimes space has to be given for judicial recounts. So it’s important for all Jamaicans to understand that the life of the Parliament is not fixed because we do not have fixed-date elections,” she added.
The House of Representatives convened on September 15, 2020, following the September 3, 2020, general election.
The Constitution’s Section 64 mandates that Parliament lasts five years from its first sitting, while Section 65 requires an election within three months of its dissolution. The law allows for a delay of up to two years in cases of war.
While he acknowledged that her interpretation of the Constitution was legally correct, Barnett noted that it diverged from Jamaica’s democratic norms.
“Strictly legally, what she says is correct, but no democratic government does that. So I’m surprised that she even bothered to make the point,” he told The Gleaner yesterday.
He said an election after the five-year life of Parliament ends would be “depriving us of our parliamentary representation by extending the period before the new Parliament is elected. ... There’s really no justification, from a democratic point of view, for that situation to be exploited”.
“One of the things about constitutions is that you must not always go by the letter of the law, but by the principle of the law,” he said.
Attorney-at-Law Kenyatta Powell also believes that Malahoo Forte is correct in her assessment.
“There is nothing in the Constitution that obligates the prime minister to instruct the governor general to dissolve Parliament before the life of the Parliament ends. That’s actually one of the issues some of us have with our constitutional system. It gives the prime minister complete discretion to decide to give an instruction to dissolve Parliament or not,” said Powell.
Like Malahoo Forte, he said once Parliament is dissolved, there are three months within which the election must be held.
“The proper thing to say is an election must be held by December, which would be three months after the [fifth anniversary of the] first sitting after the Parliament from 2020,” Powell said.
The minister’s comments have sparked backlash from the Opposition, which insists that there should be no delay beyond September 2025.
People’s National Party (PNP) General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell condemned her remarks, calling them “gratuitous”, “dangerous”, and likely to cause “uncertainty and confusion” .
“The Jamaican people expect to go to the polls by September 2025 to elect a new government. That expectation is not merely political. It is constitutional,” said Campbell. “We caution the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) administration against abusing or misinterpreting a constitutional provision for which the objective requirements do not exist.”
He called for Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness to clarify Malahoo Forte’s comments. He argued that there are no current conditions that would permit a lawful extension or deviation from this timeline.